Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 697: Foundations - The August-Tober Lull

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Ep. 697: Foundations - The August-Tober Lull · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: which has brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and this episode is all about all of
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: the lulls that might happen every year and how you
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: should pay attention so you don't fall into familiar traps
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: and familiar thinking around the October life. I've talked about
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: the lull before, I'll talk about it again. I'm sure
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: it's a perplexing time for hunters, one that comes with
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: some resolute opinions on the topic. If you take Mark Kenyan,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: for example, he's all in on the idea of the
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: October lull. This is probably because he doesn't have very
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: much experience hunting white tails and therefore just doesn't really
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: understand what's going on out there. Other hunters, such as myself,
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: don't buy it. I don't think the lull is universal
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: across deer populations, and I don't think we should treat
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: it as such. And now I'm going to tell you
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: why people who visit my house and who aren't real
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: familiar with the suburbs or what the suburbs can be,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: are often surprised at what they see. We have a
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: hell of a lot more woods around than they expect,
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: and there are a lot more critters that come with it.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: There are hobby farms and real farms around too. You know,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: not every neighborhood is cookie cutter McMansions with postage stamp
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: yards and houses that could hold multi generational families with
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: ease instead of the typical four person and a dog
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: type family. I went through this very same thing the
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: first time I went to New York, the state, not
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: the city. In my uneducated mind, I didn't really know
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: what to expect. But what I didn't expect was a
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: lot of woods and a ton of deer running around
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: in people's yards. Anyway, one of the smaller hobby farms
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: that is in our neighborhood is kind of one of
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: those places that embraces the farm culture around a bunch
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: of people who mostly couldn't tell the difference between a
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: dairy cow and a donkey. At that little farm, they
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: sell pumpkins around Halloween, hay and strall summer long, and
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: I can't prove this, but it looks like they're setting
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: up some kind of petting zoo. They also have a
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: dog that is the most farm dog looking dog I've
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: ever seen, complete with the floppiest ears in the business.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: And they also have several pens for various animals that
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: butt up nearly to the road. The huge and not
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: so huge pigs, you know, one random cow, and the
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: goats that are there would be interesting enough for my
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: daughters to want to ride their bikes by and take
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: a look. But the real draw there is an adorable
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: little lady my girl's named Marshmallow. Now. I don't know
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: if you've ever seen a baby goat in person, but
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: if you have, you know why two eleven year old
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: girls would ask their dad almost every night to ride
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: bikes over in Marshmallow's direction so we can all ooh
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: and ouder. And if I'm being honest, I kind of
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: love goats, and I don't really know why. I think
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: I like unpredictability in animals, so maybe that's it. Goats
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: aren't really into parkore and will happily jump up on
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: other animals. They'll kick and spin and generally celebrate this
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: behavior too, which for some reason I really appreciate. They
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: also often have a hell of a lot of confidence.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: They'll headbut someone who isn't looking just for the sheer
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: thrill and knocking the mass over apple cart. What's not
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: to love about that free spirits those goats are. In fact,
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: they might be my spirit animal, while Kenyan is I
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: don't know, definitely like a sloth or a three legged cat,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: maybe a flipperless seal. Perhaps. When we pedal our happy
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: asses on over to look at Marshmallow with the hope
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: in our hearts that she'll do something adorable, I tend
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: to look for a few things. The first is that
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: the route takes us past some apple trees in people's yards.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: I kind of just naturally check the daily progress and
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: how many are still in the trees and how many
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: are littered around on the ground. Then I look under
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: some oak trees. This isn't really hard to do, since
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: many of them are often real big in our neighborhood,
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: and they hang over the road in some spots. The
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: amount of acorns crushed on the road gives me a
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: good idea what's going on in the woods. And do
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: you know what I saw throughout much of August and
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: into early September thousands and thousands of pounds of acorns.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: And that's not an exaggeration either. Oak trees, of which
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: there are almost ninety species in this country alone, engage
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: in a strategy called predator satiation. With their seed drop
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: they reckon. If trees can reckon, I guess that the
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: squirrels and turkeys and and chipmunks and assorted songbirds and
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: deer are going to eat most of their potential offspring.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: That means they need a lot of nuts to hit
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: the ground, so that even if a few escape the
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: gullets of various woodland creatures, those few might just turn
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: into seedlings and eventually saplings. If those saplings make the
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: cut for a few decades, they might litter acorns down
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: on some other suburb dwellers who are looking at a
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: different baby goat in the future. This strategy of dropping
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: tons of nuts is not really any different from frogs
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: producing hundreds of tadpoles or large mouthed bass producing hundreds
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: of fry. The goal is the same. Most are gonna
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: get eaten, but a few won't. It's a quantity over
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: quality thing. It's also, at least when it comes to
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: oak trees, a great time for the deer to stop
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: doing their usual stuff and to focus almost solely on
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: a high value here today, gone tomorrow food source. When
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: those acorns near my house were raining down, they were
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: also doing so in southeastern Minnesota, where I hunt. They
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: were also doing it in north central Wisconsin where I hunt.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: And you know what, all of my cameras went real
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: cold then, and so did my long range scouting. It
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: was as if the deer were sucked off the landscape
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: by UFOs and not returned for a few weeks. There
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: was a very clear, very definitive lull in the back
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: half of August and many of the places I hunt.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: But you know what, I didn't care, not really anyway,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: for a couple of reasons. The first is that the
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: whole thing happened before I could hunt them, so it
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: was mostly just an observation on my part and just
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: a touch of a let down when I checked my cameras.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: It was also a reminder that there will be another
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: lull when the other acorns start dropping and the leaves
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: start really falling, and the other hunters start looking a
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: little deeper into the cover. This happens every year in many,
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: many different parts of the country. You know what doesn't
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: happen though, all the bucks suddenly going nocturnal and not
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: moving at all. It doesn't happen. Stop believing it. I
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: don't care if your trail cameras go dead or if
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: you can't buy a deer sighting on your favorite stand
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: that overlooks the beanfield. The deer are out there, and
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: if they stopped going somewhere or doing something, they are
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: going somewhere else while doing something else. Acorns or other
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: hard masts soft masts for that matter, can change deer
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: patterns literally overnight. So can the right cold front that
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: is coupled with some wind, which has the tendency to
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: really usher the changing leaves to the ground and leave
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: the woods far more open than they just were. This
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: is something that we as hunters inherently understand, but we
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: often ignore. We say things like I have a destination
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: food source here and a betting area there, and well
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: that's the whole puzzle. But it's not a destination food
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: source unless food is severely limited in your region. Isn't
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: going to be the same draw every day of the season.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: That's obvious, but we don't really think of it that way.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: There are so many reasons for them to not just
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: blindly walk into the alfalfa or a corn a cruise
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: the edge of a fresh clear cut. Our job as
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: good whitetail hunters isn't to adopt beliefs that allow us
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: to stop thinking, or worse, think that we know all
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: the answers. Our job is to ask questions about the
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: here and now and maybe next week, and then try
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: to answer them. Anything that you hear that allows you
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: to close the book on deer behavior in an absolute
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: way is not your friend. It's your sworn enemy, and
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: you must vanquish him and then drink a celebratory libation
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: from his skull. You don't have to go that far,
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: but you should be careful and rethink your early October strategy.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Instead of assuming it's a lost cause, ask yourself what's
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: going on that could cause the deer to shift their patterns.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: I'll give you an example that should be relatable. Have
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: you ever hung a stand in July or August that
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: you thought was just going to be perfect? For the rut.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: You know, you get up there in that August heat, sweaty,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: and you look around and you think, oh man, they're
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: going to cruise that trail or cut up the hill
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: right there or whatever, and they are never ever going
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: to see me until it's too late. And then you
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: fast forward a couple of months and you finally decide
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: the timing is right and the conditions are awful favorable
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: for you to shoot a solid one sixty five or
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: so in there, so you slip in and climb into
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: that setup. Then you look around and it feels kind
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: of like that hacky sitcom type scenario of being naked
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: in front of your coworkers. All it takes is the
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: leaves to fall down to change your game as a
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: hunter in a major, major way. Now the stand you
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: thought that was rock solid is more of a liability,
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: but you hunt it anyway. And guess what if your
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: deer aren't raised on mama's milk and lead paint chips,
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: they probably spot you, or some of them do. Anyway,
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: you're just easier to see then than you were in August.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: The same goes for the deer. They are prey animals,
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: and I have to imagine the dominant thought in their
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: minds pretty much every day is don't get eaten by something,
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: don't get caught by something. That's it. The way they
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: do this is by hiding well and trusting their senses
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: and running fast when they need to. The hiding well
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: part is their best defense in much of their life.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: And if you think they aren't aware that the woods
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: are suddenly a hell of a lot more open than
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: they were just a couple of weeks ago, then I
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: have bad news for you. So they shift their patterns.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: They adopt a new strategy for survival that involves mostly
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: spending the daylight hours where the cover still gives them
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: a solid advantage. They don't stop moving when the sun
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: is out, they just do it in more places that
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: make them feel safe. Now, what if you don't have
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: any cameras in spots? What if your cameras are all
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: out on the destination food sources. What if you don't
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: hunt deep in the cover but instead post up on
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: the edge of the woods where the views are so great, Well,
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: you're going to be all in on the lull. After all,
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: the deer obviously aren't moving, and it's probably a good
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: time to go golfing instead of wasting time in your
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: best spots, which could ruin your rut chances. A good hunter,
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: you think, gets the hell out of the woods now
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: and comes back when it's closer to Halloween. So you
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: and just about every other person out there does the
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: exact same thing. The deer realize this and they move more.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: After all, the two legged predator level has gone from
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: bananas to tolerable, which gives them more confidence to move,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: although they mostly will do it in the cover, at
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: least in my experience. So my question is this, do
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: you ever make a real note of the times when
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: you're scouting in the off season and just don't turn
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: up much. I mean with your cameras and your in
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: person observation, not just walking around looking for sign. I'll
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: bet if you paid more attention this past summer you
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: would have noticed there were stretches of a couple weeks
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: here or there where the card polls just didn't produce much,
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: and the long range glassing was mostly an exercise and futility.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Did you assume then that all the deer were nocturnal? Maybe,
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: but you're probably wrong. Then it was probably tied far
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: more closely to some type of food source that had
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: the deer all bunched up and using the same spots. Now,
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: if you're the kind of hunter who doesn't adapt well
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: to changing conditions, you might think that those situations are
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: just a good time to get out and wait for
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: easier hunting. But think of it this way. If you
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: knew there was something out there concentrating deer activity and
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: you could find it, wouldn't you want to know the what, where,
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: and why the whole thing. Wouldn't you want to take
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: a perceived disadvantage, one that is almost universally believed by
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: the hunting masses, and turn it into your personal advantage.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: I would I use the lull as a time to
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: try to shoot a few doughs, which keeps me in
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: the woods. I use it as a chance to start
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: going really mobile and looking for fresh sign and doing
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: a lot observation sets. I know that on my private farms,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: and definitely on my public land hunts, that my competition
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: isn't going to be as serious about hunting as they
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: will be in a few weeks. That's a huge advantage
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: to anyone willing to stay out there and hunt. And
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: I mean that it's a huge, huge, advantage. I also
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: know that, over the course of my hunting career, I've
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: found deer on a hot acorn pattern randomly, and it
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: has almost always produced some of my most exciting hunts.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: There's something so fun about posting up near a white
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: oak that is dropping ten in free goodness into the
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: leaf litter, when you know eventually you'll hear the sound
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: of deer approaching. It's also fun knowing that if you
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: get into that situation, you might have visitors all hours
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: of the day, or you might have a crazy hunt
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: right after a strong wind knocks down a ton or
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: so of groceries. The key to all this, and to
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: really master the times when the deer seem to have vanished,
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: is to end season scout and to observe. There isn't
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: a time during any season where I adopted an observation
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: strategy more religiously than during the first two weeks of October.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Because I might not know what tree is the tree,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: but I can set up on a ridge or an
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: oak flat and figure it out pretty quickly. This is
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: not the time to move a bunch of cameras around
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: and cross your fingers, because by the time you get
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: enough intel to work with the whole thing's going to
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: be over. You have to treat this time of year
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: as something that can produce amazing hunts. But there is
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: a shelf life to that. You might get a few days,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: you might get a few weeks, but where you find
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: your best hunts in early to mid October isn't likely
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: to last. So now, before I wrap this up, I
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: want to drive this point home. I'm going to swing
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: you back to August for a second. When my cameras
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: went mostly dry and my glassing session started to get
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: real boring, I didn't think there was an August lull.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: I just thought, well, something's going on. There has to
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: be a reason why the deer aren't where they were,
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: and that reason was simple enough to understand. Those same
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: rules apply to October. If the deer stop doing what
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: you expect them to do, it's not because there's a
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: switch that gets flipped and all the deer suddenly decide
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: to go fully nocturnal for three weeks. It doesn't work
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: that way, and I don't care how many white tail
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: experts say it. The deer is still going to bed
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: somewhere and eat somewhere, and walk somewhere and they'll do
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: stuff during shooting hours that will give you a chance
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: to arrow them. You just need to understand that the
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: woods are in a state of constant change, with early
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: October being an especially transitional time frame. It just is
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: there's a lot going on out there, and that means
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: your early season program that you work so hard to
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: set up might just be dead as the old dinosaurs.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Instead of accepting that as a good reason to wait
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: for the pre rut, ask yourself where the deer likely went,
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: what they are likely doing. Pay attention to your surroundings,
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: and maybe you'll notice a ton of acorns smashed on
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: the road, acorns that you don't remember being there just
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: last week. Maybe you'll notice something else, like a high
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: prevalence of combines in the field while you're commuting to work.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Who knows. The truth is there and there's reasons for
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: these changes. It's out there. It's better to view this
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: time of year as an opportunity to figure something out
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: than an excuse to stay out of the woods. Go
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: find them, go hunt them and do what so many
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: hunters think you can't, and come back next week because
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: I'm going to talk just all about white tails and
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: their evolution and how cool they really are. It's just
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: going to be a sciencey little breakdown of our favorite
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: game animal. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: you so much for checking in and for listening. Really
• 16:39
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• 16:43
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